The cash-strapped Big Apple is on the verge of turning into one big refugee camp, as the migrant crisis will soon become even more obvious to New Yorkers when more asylum seekers start to live on the streets, Mayor Eric Adams warned Tuesday.
Adams blamed the flow of migrants into the five boroughs for planned cuts to city services, as he promised to slash the cost of housing them by 20% — although he’s yet to say how.
“The visible signs of this crisis is going to start to show itself and our goal is to not have people sleeping on the street,” Adams said at a Tuesday press conference.
“And, actually, believe it or not, there are migrant and asylum seekers who are saying, ‘We want to sleep on the streets.’ And so and people have the right to do so we need to be clear on that in New York City. People have a right to sleep on the streets. We cannot stop them. I want New Yorkers to understand that.”
When asked if all his dire warnings were just a negotiating tactic to prod the Biden administration into coughing up more money for New York, the mayor complained that the flow of migrants from the out-of-control borders was a national problem and that feds weren’t doing enough to help
“You know, and I think that when you have elected officials looking for political points, instead of making the point that New York City tax dollars should not be going to paying for a national problem,” he said Tuesday. “Every conversation should start with that … so we don’t try to use this as leverage.
“It’s unfair to migrants and asylum seekers and it’s unfair to New York City taxpayers.”
Adams has frequently called out the Biden administration for not helping the city enough. During one meeting last year with administration officials he told them “there’s no leadership here.”
“There is no reason the national government is not standing true to the basic principle of the American experience to allow you the right to work,” he said during a Brooklyn rally in August. “It is unacceptable.”
And the figures show how much federal help is needed. City Hall said earlier this year that the crisis could cost taxpayers as much as $12 billion over the next three years, creating a budget crunch.
The expected cuts come after the mayor gave all city departments until this month to slash an initial 5% from their budgets — and warned they should brace for an additional two rounds, totaling another 10%, early next year in response to the migrant crisis.
But he also said he’ll trim 20% from the cost of sheltering more than 140,000 migrants who have come through the Big Apple, with 65,000 still under city care.
He just hasn’t said how he plans to pull it off.
“Every day there is a level of maneuvering that we have to do with the flow of migrants and asylum seekers here,” he said. “Nothing is off the table. We don’t even know the flow that we did.
“Our desire has always been a layered approach to, first [and] most importantly, layer not to have children in the sleeping in the streets industry. That has been my number one concern,” the mayor said. “Secondly, is not to have everyday people sleeping on the streets.”
He addressed the issue again at a roundtable discussion on WABC77-AM hosted by John Catsimatidis, during which he called on business leaders “to help me address the asylum seeker issue.
” We have successfully gotten 50 percent of them stabilized, but we still have over 65,000 that are in our care,” he said. “We need to allow them to work, to fill the employment positions that many of you have.
“And we need to ask the federal government to, one, have a decompression strategy so the other cities, counties and municipalities can also share in the burden,” he said. “Two, we need to pay for this. This is a national problem. New York City’s taxpayers should not be paying this cost.”
Meanwhile, the state, which Gov. Kathy Hochul said has doled out $2 billion to help with the crisis, may be moving away from chipping for migrant shelters and focusing more on other costs like legal services.
City Budget Director Jacques Jiha said that could mean “more drastic action.
“So, we are hoping that we don’t have to get there and we get more assistance from the state,” Jiha said. “At the same time, we are exploring different exit strategies.”
That could include a tweak to 30- and 60-day camps for shelter says to move migrants out quicker.
“Our goal is to not have people sleeping on the street. We don’t want to turn into those cities that are displaying that,” Adams added. “The first most important layer is to not have children sleeping in the streets.”